SAP Research
Position paper for the W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents
SAP is the recognized leader in providing collaborative business
solutions for all types of industries and for every major market.
SAP Research Centers study IT trends and deploy new technologies in
real-life environments to determine their potential business value for
SAP. As a result, we are able to introduce new technology and concepts
for future solutions that will be strategically important to SAP and
our customers.
SAP has strong interest in the field of web applications. Its
Enterprise Portal [EP] makes use of the Web technologies to display
the SAP portal contents on web browsers.
The emergence of a multitude of devices that a portal client may have
sets new requirements on the way applications must be designed, since
a single User Interface (UI) design won't necessarily fit on any type
of devices. In an effort to reduce the resources required for
developing UI that work on technically different devices (from wired
phone to desktop PCs), SAP Corporate Research conducted the Consensus
project [CONSENSUS], which is an EU-FP5 research project. Together
with IBM, Nokia, Ubicall, Cure and Fujitsu, the team developed a UI
description language called RIML, based on a compound language of
XHTML2.0, SMIL and XForms. In addition to that, the Consensus team
also provided the runtime architecture based on Apache, and the UI
design tools based on the Eclipse platform.
The interest of SAP Research in this workshop is to provide its view
from a content perspective. Indeed, SAP is the leader in the
Enterprise Resources Planning field, and as such provides a wide range
of applications, from Customer Relationship Management to Human
Resources and travel planning. Therefore SAP has specific needs on the
future possibilities of the web standards, including scripting
capabilities and available widgets. SAP Research wants to bring to
this workshop its knowledge acquired during the two years spent on the
Consensus project.
References:
[EP] http://www.sap.com/solutions/netweaver/enterpriseportal/index.asp
[CONSENSUS] http://www.consensus-online.org/